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Sunday, May 18, 2014

DAP FOCUSES TOO MUCH ON RACE

By SSK

Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, DAP’s candidate for the Teluk Intan by-election, is being touted as the greatest thing since the invention of apple pie. She is young. She has the looks. However, most importantly of all, as far as DAP is concerned, she is Malay.

Why is the fact that she is Malay so important? Why the need to emphasis that point and use that as the selling factor? If she were Chinese or Indian would that have made her a lesser candidate? More importantly, I suppose, would be the question: if she were not Malay would DAP have chosen her to contest the by-election?

DAP and Pakatan Rakyat are putting too much emphasis on her race. They are making it appear like that is most important. Why is it so important that she is Malay and not Chinese, Indian or whatever?

They also very frequently bring this point up regarding Lim Guan Eng. “Lim Guan Eng is not a racist,” they will argue, “and the proof is because he went to jail for a Malay girl.” They are, or course, talking about the Rahim Thambi Chik case.

Guan Eng was not charged for the crime of defending a Malay girl. So why keep reminding us that the girl is Malay? Guan Eng was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced for the crime of sedition. He would have still been arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced for the crime of sedition even if the girl was Chinese, Indian or from any other race.

We can see that the focus here is on the race of the girl and not on the crime that was allegedly committed. And the frequent reference to the fact that Guan Eng ‘went to jail for a Malay girl’ gives the impression that this whole issue of Guan Eng getting jailed was because the girl was a Malay girl. But then this is not what happened.

DAP keeps telling us that it is a multi-racial party. Multi-racial is still racial. You cannot avoid being called a racial party even if you are a multi-racial party. The only thing is you talk in terms of multi-race rather than single-race. However, if DAP claims to be a non-raced-based party then that would be another thing altogether.

But DAP does not say it is a non-raced-based party because it knows it can never get away with that. So it claims it is a multi-racial party, which means it is still racial but more than one race. And the frequent reference to Guan Eng going to jail for a Malay girl and that its candidate in Teluk Intan is Malay shows that DAP is very race-centric and looks at everything in terms of race.